Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Mapbox Studio, More Kadinsky than Matisse

Last week Mapbox released the successor to TileMill, Mapbox Studio. Studio allows you to fully control the design of your base-map layers and create your own beautifully designed custom maps.

Today I managed to have my first proper look at Mapbox Studio and I have to say it is a very impressive and powerful design tool.

For my first map design I thought I would use Mapbox Studio to try and create a map in the style of a Matisse cut-out painting, using the color palette from his painting 'The Snail'. I was helped greatly in this task by a post today on the Mapbox blog, Design Control with Regular Expressions in Mapbox Studio. This post helped me understand how I could color different building types by using their OpenStreetMap id.

The resulting map is a little more Kadinsky than Matisse, but I like it anyway.

I haven't had time to explore all of Mapbox Studio's features yet, But color me impressed - using a Matisse color scheme.The Mapbox Studio is a joy to use. I'd never used TileMill before, yet I managed to create the above map style in less than 30 minutes.

The Mapbox Studio homepage has all the documentation that you need to get started designing your own custom maps. So far I've only completed the 'Style Quickstart' tutorial. It is very easy to follow and provides a great introduction to getting started with Studio. It has certainly whetted my appetite and I can't wait to start really exploring all the features of Mapbox Studio in a little more depth.